One area of women’s development which deserves more recognition is career choice. There is still a tendency among young women graduates to underestimate their abilities and opt for “safe” or more “feminine” occupations. Executive life does not attract many women, perhaps because of less easily discernible career paths. So although many women do end up as managers and leaders, it is not something they set out to do. I believe careers education could play a more vigorous role and help improve the image of executive careers, while organisations could offer more structured work experience opportunities, possibly within a gap year.
Lynne Spencer, Work Psychologist
Client’s Care
I read with interest Alison Hardingham’s Viewpoint (Coaching at Work, issue 1) on the pitfalls of relying on coachee testimonials for feedback, and her views on how to improve feedback. She suggests client feedback questionnaires, but if the questions are not skilfully worded you get the same invalid feedback as you get with testimonials. Instead, 360s before and during the coaching programme give more objective and quantitative performance indicators. I’d add longevity of contract as another good indicator of success. We’re working with two companies who employed us to run three and six month programmes, but a year on we’re still there, coaching new teams. Finally, on flattering testimonials, here’s one from a converted sceptic, a board director in a media company: “I thought it would be a load of Mystic Meg rubbish, but after I put down a few markers and the coaching began, it was brilliant and it’s really transformed how I work with my teams.” If he didn’t like the coaching he wouldn’t have said this to please us he’d have sacked our coach!
Marie Willis
Managing Director, Lequin Executive Coaching
Early Support
As a coach working within schools and colleges it was heartening to read the article in issue 1 of Coaching at Work on mentoring in schools on the DfES’s mentoring programme. Though the DfES should be commended, by choosing to wait until students are underachieving, it is ignoring successes and perpetuating failure. Surely it would make more sense to support and enhance the potential in all students at an early age? For example, research indicates that black boys enter secondary school as the second highest academic performing students. When they leave they are ranked as the second lowest academically. The article also fails to highlight the fact that mentoring and coaching the whole person to support their overall development is as important as supporting their academic achievement. The suggestion that BME students have low aspirations is just not true. Having worked with over 250 BME students I am often astounded at the realistically high aims they have, both academically and professionally. Only through talking and listening to young people regardless of ethnicity is it possible to discover that they are willing to make the most of their potential if given encouragement early in, and consistently throughout, their education.
Amechi Udo
Coaching Director, inspiredtocoach.com
Remote Control
In December I attended the 12th annual conference of the European Mentoring & Coaching Council in Zurich where I presented on E-Mentoring. A number of themes emerged; a key one being that of supervision of coaches/mentors. Apart from the fact that I feel the word “supervision” is misleading, there is a strong argument in favour of the coaches/mentors receiving more support in structured programmes.
These arguments are supported from my own research among the volunteer coaches and mentors who have supported the E-Mentoring programmes that I have designed and developed. Perhaps there is a feeling of “remoteness” that e-mentors and e-coaches feel traditional deliveries overcome, but addressing this is not difficult. Another theme that I am interested in is that of “Blended Coaching/Mentoring”, where a number of different communication methods are utilised. Many independent coaches/mentors already use technology driven communication to support their face to face interactions with their clients that a few years ago were not in evidence. It was a thought provoking conference.
Kevin Hunt
Circle Squared Europe
Viewpoint – Be prepared to share
Coaches must be fully prepared to collaborate, both with each other, and in the wider business world, in order to thrive
John Whitmore
Coming from a place of caring and sharing in the current “never enough” business culture of fear, acquisition, possession and competition is a challenge. But our future may depend on our ability to manifest such qualities. If we take the bigger vision of coaching to business, to create a better quality of life, we must become role models of collaboration. So how are we doing?
Recent years have seen coaching schools spring up, with on-line instant coach courses, modular courses leading to a diploma or degree, and the emergence of several “governing bodies”. These include the International Coach Federation; the European Mentoring and Coaching Council, and the Association for Coaching, both in the UK; and the Worldwide Association of Business Coaches in Canada. After a short flirtation with the idea of becoming “the Global Coaching Governing body”, most of these associations settled for the compromise of a niche role and/or of collaboration. But each found that working together was easier said than done.
What lies at the root of these good intentions and the squabbling? The short answer is evolution, and the lack of it, respectively. The most widely known evolutionary model which applies to individuals and groups is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Our Western culture is at the lower Esteem level, described as the need for Status and Recognition. Our economic structure is commensurate with that consciousness: capitalism rooted in acquisition and self-importance at the top and survival at the bottom. It is not surprising, then, that our common social attitudes and behaviours are products of that same consciousness and the system that it spawns, so competition, protectiveness, mistrust, command and control, are the norm, and habitual in our culture. When we try to collaborate, for that is what our higher aspirations are, our competitive, protective, fear-driven attitudes and behaviours seep out. It is not surprising that we find it hard to get our associations to collaborate. We are schizophrenic; we want to at the higher level, yet we don’t want to at a “primitive” level.
As coaches we are aware of this problem because our biggest challenge is getting up into the Self-Belief or Self-Actualising level. If we are going to help business people to reach these levels, we need to have reached that level of consciousness ourselves. Our internal competitiveness indicates that we are not there yet. As coaches an essential stage in personal development is moving beyond the self-interested level of status and recognition into self-belief, and that liberates us from fear. Some younger entrepreneurial coaches suffer from a conflict of interest as they work out their own issues. Others are affected by their need for recognition and desire to retain what they have. They have a hard time collaborating with their erstwhile colleagues, lest they lose something. Some coaches use techniques, exercises, models and PowerPoint visuals to teach others to become coaches, but forbid others to use their material.
Don’t they see that they will be the first beneficiaries if their colleagues and their students do a great job? When we share, people trust us and they share in return, or simply because of the role model we are. When we all share, we all do our job better. Let us begin to recommend each other to clients if another provider is better equipped to meet clients’ needs. Think about the respect you would gain from both client and competitor for so doing. Share all you have and let coaching put its best foot forward all the time. What stops us doing this? Fear; that we might be left out, that we might not measure up, that our weaknesses might show and so on. The Inner Game, the purest basis of workplace coaching, is predicated upon recognising and eliminating our internal obstacles, of which fear is the greatest. If we expect to shift business from the Fear paradigm where it is now, into the Trust paradigm where it needs to be, we must make the shift ourselves first.